November 15, 2009

I’m trying to catalog everything I own, which means taking stuff off of shelves and out of closets and painstakingly entering the data into an Excel file. Wish me luck. Here’s some of the first I busted out: Bullmark “Meka Machine” series toys. Plus a Big Blazer.

November 8, 2009

In our last episode, our young hero idiots were buried under a pile of toys they stupidly thought they could catalog and identify at the rate of approximately 1 every 46.2 seconds. Thankfully these dumb fools had friends: equally stupid friends, who would blindingly sacrifice their lives for the same lumps of zinc and vinyl that the original idiots worshiped. And so it was that we found ourselves with a shitload of people all throwing down in a race against time, culminating in the vintage japanese toy wank of the decade:

ACTIVATING: SJOEN UP!

Friday am. An unknown location outside Philly.

My toy loving brethren have entered the Valhalla of Japanese toydom. Thrust into the unknown, a team of degenerate collectors hone in on Morphy’s with a serious vengeance and an aching to make it right with the world. Weeks of planning and back and forth have led to this pivotal moment and BAM!!

It’s GO:

Skivvies and a fresh beer greet the morn.. The Skype is a chirping LOUD.

The dog that I so fondly thought a woman moments ago slowly wakes up, licks it’s ass and climbs out of bed before me. Two seconds ago I was conquering the world, Jessica Alba by my side. Reality bites. A pissed off pit bull, a warm beer and the toy geeks ringing off the hook. Welcome to my life..

“Daltanias…” I mumble.

Throw on the newly pressed Bullmark Tshirt and bring the macbook to the back yard. 65 in SF, 100 outside Philly… Poor bastards must be hot as hell… Well, poor probably isn’t the right word.

“What else you got?” I spout, head in hand. “Bring it!” I say, ego abounding as I lift my eyes up to view the 13 inch screen before me embedded with the pillar of diecast pornography.

“HOLY SHIT!!” I shout looking out at the sea of boxes 1/2 a stadium deep.

Mark shuffles up, cheeks clinched looking like he just drank a pint of bacon grease. Either that or a pint of JD.

Eyes blurred from seeing what I think might just be a lucid interpretation of last night’s dream seeping into the real world, I figure I need to make a decision on the quick. A valuable decision. A non toy related decision.

I figured “I NEED” more sleep.

THE END. — Erik

ACTIVATING: ALT UP!

The chogo-phone rings with savage urgency as I wipe the sleep from my eyes. Here in Tokyo, the first rays of a bright morning are filtering through my blinds. But meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Team TBDX is knee-deep in Popy cardboard — and they’re in trouble.

“Operator 3G! Come in! We need an ID, stat! For God’s sake, COME IN!” I can hear the barely-masked terror in Alen’s voice, digitized and reconstituted here, thousands of miles from the danger zone. He’s got a problem and he’s called in the Internet equivalent of a UAV drone for an immediate informatiostrike on his position. I’m happy to oblige.

The photos begin arriving at once. First one, then five, then nearly a dozen. Each of them filled with uncountable, unknowable bits of plastic, metal, even twine. I’d seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, but nothing prepared me for the glittering darkness filling my monitor screen.

“My god. It’s full of toys….” I find myself involuntarily muttering into the commlink.

“All… after… incinerators? I didn’t get that last bit, 3G. You’re breaking up!”

“Forget it, Alen-One. Target acquired. Maintain current position.” Long hours of practice masked the extreme unease I was feeling at the photos. I recognized the propeller from the Takatoku Omochama, and a few of the other missiles, but what about the dozens of others?”

— Matt

* * *

Well, we know how the story ends. Erik and Matt threw down huge on getting 300 or so entries tidied up. Thanks to the ass-kicking skills of Jim Maitland, the vinyl id’s were completed on time. Brian Flynn from Super7 had a hand in the vintage vintage. Robert Duban went savante on the final catalog descriptions. Geoge Samson rewrote our Valkryie gibberish.

Without Warren and Steve Saperstein, we wouldn’t have been in this hell/paradise.

Finally, we want to thank THE.C. who helped us with the brute force assembling of all the stuff there…

WITH (4) DAYS TO GO BEFORE THE EVENT, IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO BUY YOURSELF A CHEAP-ASS TICKET TO GET TO PHILLY. CATALOGS ARE SHIPPED, AND IF YOU GOT YOUR NAME IN WITHIN A WEEK OF THE ORIGINAL INVITE, AND RECEIVED THE FLYER, YOU SHOULD BE ALL SET.

TOYBOXDX TEAMS ARE PACKING AND GETTING READY TO CONVERGE ON THE K.O.P. KEEP YOUR EYELIDS PEELED THIS WEEK FOR SOME MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS WHICH WILL CULMINATE IN LIVE SHOW AND TELL THIS WEEK!

U-Combine Shogun Combatra Deluxe Set. One of my holy grails becomes reality.
It all begun with the Shogun Warriors. They infected my brain with the japanese robot virus
more then 30 years ago. If I knew as a kid that there is a Shogun Combatra Deluxe Set
existing…but I didn’t, no Combatra in germany. So I had been a happy kid without Combatra.
Why Combatra with only one “t”? Bad translation by Mattel?

Ok, back to Combatra. A few years ago I realized that there is a Shogun Combatra Deluxe Set
and the U-Combine set with 5 individual boxes. But I needed some years to get my Combatra.
A few weeks ago “my” set pops up on ebay. Looked not to bad on the pictures. Nearly complete &
nice condition and comes with the box. I think the most important thing of this great robot is
the box…the wonderful, some say crappy, shogun box. Here are some impressions…

The Box is made of simply cardboard only the front is printed full color, back is only 1 color blue.
But its huge. You see it compared with the rodan box etc. Well, nearly forget this, the box is the
most expensive part of combatra deluxe set ;-)
Most of you guys own such a Combattra PA-78-82, or had one in your hands sometime.
For me its my “first time”. I’m impressed how big Combattra is in reality.
Here are some detail shots of the 5 vehicles that could be combined to Combattra.

After you combined Battle Jet, Battle Clasher, Battle Tank, Battle Marine and Battle Craft
you get the biggest metal Shogun Warrior ever. Mr.Combattra. As the box says:“Combine ‘em to make a robot 1 foot tall!”

Great robot design from any angle.

To tell my “how-I-come-to-my-Combatra-story” to the end. As I mentioned he pops up on ebay.
I was high-bidder 2 times, but didn’t met the reserve. I wasn’t sure how much Combatra is worth for me,
I looks that I didn’t love ($) him enough. But I had a third chance. Because reserve wasn’t met 2 times,
the seller (a nice guy from California) wanted to sell Combatra as “direct buy” or “make a offer”.
It looks that my offer was better than the offer of another guy…

That was, again, a little foto lovestory. Sorry I waste so much webspace for
a “simple” Combatra….Combattra.
I always get very emotional when I got a new bot ;-)

November 1, 2009

Bankid. An obscure series and not exactly high on any want list, if its on the list at all. Even among popinica-esque toy lovers, these things are pretty well ignored. But I think their pretty sleek and cool in their own little way, so I figure what the hell, there’s only four in the series, so I’ll tell you a bit about them.

First up is the Baby.
In the show, there are three of these ships that sit on the Mother’s wings and seperate from it when the need arises. It has interchangeable nose pieces, launching missiles in the wings, and a small pod that sits in the cockpit. It’s a pretty nice piece.

Next up is the Ace.
This forms the nose of the Mother and can seperate for attack if needed. It comes with missiles and has two levers on the back – one for raising/lowering the landing gear and the other for the wing. Another decent piece.

Here we have the Standard Mother.
This is the big dissapointment of the group. It really is tiny. The Baby’s seperate from its’ wings and it has small plastic discs that can be lauched with a lever midship. The launching mechanism is a rubber band – that is inside the ship. So you have to crack it open to replace or adjust the band, and there are many pieces (mainly the landing gear) that will fall apart and have to be carefully put back when your done – not fun. Mine still doesn’t work properly and I have no inclination of trying again anytime soon. It’s only about a $50 piece deadstock, but unless your a completest or diehard fan (don’t think there is such an animal), I’d pass it by.

Finally, we have the DX Mother.
This is the piece I’ve searched for quite a while before finally getting. I’ve yet to see it show up on auction (Morphy’s will change that), and had to obtain mine in a private deal. Takatoku should have just released this one and not bothered with the standard version IMO. The Baby’s and Ace can sepearte from the Mother, it has a hidden missile launcher that, thankfully, is spring loaded, and it comes with a platform that the ship sits on or can be used to launch the Baby’s if you want. The platform is rubber band based, but is not that big a deal to replace – I used a small hairband from one of my daughters, as I find it works great and should last much longer than a rubber.

Well, that’s about it. Nothing earth shattering or must have here, but I figure any vintage gokin deserves it’s 15 minutes.